upstate medical center blues $18 million a year. it's going to hurt the economy.

so i voted to repeal the affordable care act. beyond that we voted for bipartisan support for three free trade agreements that will aid in increasing the number of exports from our district. >> we have time for rebuttal. what are your thoughts regarding the stimulus act? maffei: i think the recovery act was essential at the time. first of all we're lots of small tax cuts that were essential to those families. secondly, we kept police on the street, kept or teachers to me laid off in our classrooms from blowing up in size. and firefighters. so certainly we had to do something. the thing that i am really confused about, that's bad but there do the right thing on the taxes apparently. but now some of the economy is starting to be fine for millionaires and billionaires. i'm doing the wrong thing by asking them to pay their share. and get we need to balance the budget but where is the money going to come from? none of it adds up.

>> moderator: urso, your reaction. rozum: i think would be immoral to repeal the affordable good activist. there's too many good parts i think we move forward. repealing that wouldn't get us where we need to go which is medicare for all systems which make it much easier for employers to hire workers and provide health care for them because they would be paying a simple medical payroll tax. it hasn't proven to be true because there should be increased by from medical devices under the affordable care act the i'm not compelled by his arguments. >> ann marie buerkle, your chance for rebuttal. buerkle: they're going to left 10% of the workforce is indicative of the affordable care act. i was going to affect jobs and economy. our largest employers in our district, the affordable care

act is going to dramatically impact medicare reimbursement to hospitals, to our physicians along with sequestration. of our hospitals are not alive and welcome you can have the most comprehensive health care plan in the world but if you don't have hospitals or physicians who will treat these patients, their health care system is going to fail miserably. so i would say absolutely we need to repeal the affordable care act for jobs and the economy's sake. >> moderator: further on jobs, did the obama administration try something similar to your jobs for all program with a seamless package? how do you compare the two? rozum: no, because the stimulus was not meant to be a permanent public jobs program and the cost of those jobs were skyhigh. it cost almost $800 billion, yet another jobs created or saved for only 3 million. the numbers we're talking are similar, 800 million, 800 billion, excuse me but to greet over 10 million jobs.

and so direct public employment is a little different than giving tax breaks to companies, to create jobs. because the job creators aren't getting it done. they are not creating jobs. >> moderator: dan the thick, a follow up on jobs. you think under a second obama administration, should you return to washington could you create a more favorable tax environment for businesses or hospitals to grow so that could be more jobs? maffei: there's no question tax reform would be very, very important and if you think we need to lower rates but get rid of a lot of loopholes, particularly corporate loopholes, the ones that ship jobs overseas. cease to exist. ann marie buerkle is voted to continue. she's voted to continue to big tax breaks for oil companies. that's very important. i do think there's changes that need to be made in the affordable care act. i'm opposed to the device attacks. i've worked with well challenged not to in first place. i do think we need to make those

changes but we will never making changes if we're not willing to compromise. >> moderator: would repealing affordable care act affect jobs in any way, it positively? the you see it affecting it in a negative way? buerkle: absolutely. this country needs health care reform. transom but you are saying he will repeal it? buerkle: i will repeal it and put in something that will be bipartisan. this is something the democrats sat down shutdown stroke of the of the american people. dan maffei never came back and talk to the district. this medicare, this affordable care act cuts medicare for our seniors by $700 billion in our district alone that means cuts of a billion dollars for our seniors. this law was not well thought out. it was not bipartisan but it was very partisan approach to health care reform transit do you have another plan? buerkle: yes, we do. >> maybe we can get to that with our follow-up question you. this is about medicare. as the population ages, the

current cost projections for medicare our financial and sustainable the nation. so which of the several floated plans out there to put medicare on stronger financial footing do you support and why? we will begin with dan maffei. maffei: it's extremely important we save medicare, as a guaranteed benefit. the wait is now. not just for today's generation but for future generations to ann marie buerkle says if you're over 55 don't worry. there's real reasons why you should worry. if you're under 55 you better watch out because she wants to change it. the ryan budget should vote for makes into the voucher program. that's one way to handle it but there are other ways. medicare needs some adjustments but fundamentally it's a program that works. what doesn't work is the very, very high cost of health care. that's a lot our we need to do to lower health care costs. obamnicare did start the process. it did start lowering health care cost. however, we need to do more. one of the things that we're primary here in central new york is electronic medical records.

those are one ways we can avoid repetition and different tests and things like that. we can work with medical schools, physicians dementias more primary care physicians. also lower medical costs. we need to work together, a proposal of family physicians to make a medical home. these are all ideas that will help lower medical costs and save medicare. >> moderator: we're going to go to ann marie buerkle trained to thank you. of all of the distortions and the disingenuous advertising and ad campaigns that have gone on, it is dan maffei's position on medicare. dan maffei and he would have voted for his affordable care act needs to take responsibility that they cut medicare for our current seniors by 700 seen billion dollars. that will dramatically affect the services that are hospitals and physicians will be able to get your seniors. every scene in the audience should be concerned about the law the land that dan maffei

voted for. if you want to talk about lowering health care costs you've got to get tort reform. this law does not include any. dan talks about electronic medical records. he should be talking to the physicians. if your full practitioner, the burden of electronic medical records put on your practice, this law was not well thought-out picket didn't have the appropriate parties at the table. we can do better for the american people. >> moderator: thank you. rozum: we can do better for the american people which is why i support a medicare for all program, like proposed in congress almost every year. most recently by john conyers. again, h.r. 676 is a medicare for all legislation, and we should not medicare the way it is and use medicare for all. and i think the medicare for all would transfer $560 billion that right now going to the bureaucracy and the monopoly process of drug companies take care. because what we have right now is not a health care system. we have a sick care system that

is focused on insurance company profits that only go up when they deny us care. the best way to stabilize health care costs if you take the and put them in a medicare for all system. i just wanted to go toward reform for just one second. i would suggest ann marie buerkle discuss tort reform with senator defrancisco was said that tort reform is not a problem and that medical malpractice insurance only contributes very slightly to health care costs. with a medicare for all system we wouldn't have to worry about tort reform. we would not have a lawsuit that would cover care. >> moderator: thank you. with 30 seconds for you, dan maffei to rebut. maffei: i think it's important and we talks about the 760 builder but that was, it was cuts to insurance coverage to write services. it was to provide that they had to providing with the it didn't

get any benefits. this has been proven wrong. said ron by the post-standard. and the thing is this is what president clinton mentioned in the democratic convention. she voted for the same thing anywhere. it's in the ryan budget. the ryan budget keeps these cuts. so and ann marie buerkle talk that we need to do differently, how come she hasn't? she's been the congresswoman for two years. where's the change? buerkle: let's be real clear. the affordable care act in its current form cuts medicare for our seniors by $700 billion. a cut of medicare advantage by two and 50 billion, and 300 billion the cbo has is with us cuts to be even more. that does not add cats to insurance coverage to medicare is a federal program. it will be cuts to the services that are hospitals and physicians can provide for our seniors. those will be the cuts. the impact our seniors will be real. we are already hearing from our constituents saying that the cabinet decision you will treat medicare patients.

it's real and it is a really consequence of this affordable care act. >> moderator: ursala rozum, 30 seconds. rozum: i think disagreement over the affordable care act and constant debate over health care that we have medicare for all is quite indicative of the dysfunction we see in washington, which is why we need new leadership and progressive leadership. the affordable care act is modeled after romneycare in massachusetts and was originally developed a insurance company executives with the company's wellpoint. so what i want to hear from our representatives and from my fellow candidates right here is how can we get to medicare for all system that provides health care as a human rights and will find a stabilize health care costs? >> moderator: with follow-up for each of you. starting with dan maffei, again i'm referencing the richard rabbit-paul volcker report. the reduction in future spending under the new health care law will implemented cut health care prices are hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home

healthy, labs and other services. over the next 75 years to less than half of the level under the prior law. according to the program's action was, by the year 2085 medicare payment rates for inpatient hospital services will have sunk to 33% of private health insurance payment rates causing a withdrawal of providers from the medicare market and severe problems with beneficiary access to care. how would you address that problem? transfer i will read that report you're reading from. there are a lot of opinions about his health care bill. the a lot of opinions even before the supreme court ruled on it, and i'm just not sure whether that one is a more true than a lot of the opinions that say that hospitals will get more patients and will actually be in better shape. but what i will say is we got to keep working. the affordable care act is the law the olympic it's not going to be repealed but we can fix

it. there are some things that need to be fixed. i think medicare should be able to negotiate for the pharmaceutical prices just like the va does. that would save a lot of money. so you're asking, we've got to move forward. i think that the trouble with this discussion is we're just continuing to argue these past issues when we do have to move forward. there so people are uninsured. there's still people who are not getting the kind of care they need, even though at least now people won't run out of their insurance and won't have the worst things happen to them transit thank you, dan maffei. ann marie buerkle, this follow-up is for you. paul bryant plan retains virtually all of the medicare reductions that are in the health care law. the only difference is that he diverts the savings to his medicare overhaul. so isn't it is misleading to claim that these reductions are cuts that hurt elderly

beneficiaries now while failing to inform voters the ryan plan incorporates exactly the same reduction? buerkle: i think what you're saying is paul ryan, because he started up a sign that the affordable care act sets, he took the $700 billion in cuts and put them back into the medicare program to strengthen the program for seniors. that's never one. number two, the study you just mentioned, and says he's got to resistant to all been has to do is going to talk to are hospitals or physicians or physical therapist or cardiologist, or chiropractors or skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes who are all feeling the direct impact and are so concerned, so concerned about how they will move forward with all of these cuts they're going to feel within the affordable care act. i think of all the parts of this campaign that have been so disturbing is the fear tactics that have been used against seniors that we don't want to make medicare stronger and healthier. i of the night he won year old mother.

i am not going to medicare for. i know how important it is for her. >> moderator: ursala rozum. maffei: president obama -- rozum: present the obama failed. at what you propose to be with the president couldn't. rozum: i'm not sure if it's quite true to say that president obama tried to provide a single-payer option. he campaign on the public option in 2008 and gathered support of many progressive voters that really did what single-payer health care. and then a single-payer was not, option was not on the table in 2009. so i think what we really need is winnable progressives in congress that will stand up and fight for what we need, which is health care for all the medicare for all which will rein in increasing health care costs. the united states spends about twice as much per capita on health care as other countries. we are about summer between 30th and 40th in the quality of care we provide, according to the world health organization.

and it shouldn't be that way because we do have some of the most skilled doctors and researchers here. and so with medicare for all we guarantee access to care, and we allow patients to choose their doctors, to choose their hospitals and then we really have patient choice and a free market where doctors are competing to do better and nurses are competing to do better. >> moderator: next question. today in his u.s. senate candidate at indiana's richard mourdock apologized for offending anyone forcing pregnancies from rape or something that god intended to happen. the accused democrats or distorting his comments, but even is today commenting the memo issue for voters, the campaign ads in this race were some $6 million will be spent in television advertising have focused on positions on abortion or when does life begin, women's reproductive rights. why is this issue in this campaign been so important? buerkle: we just heard dan

maffei say it's important not to look back. one of the ways dan maffei doesn't look back and hold himself a couple for the votes he took for the district, with the affordable care act, cap-and-trade, stimulus bill, dodd-frank, is to create and distort and distract the this is a national campaign the democrats are running. he goes right along with his democratic party. i spent 16 years as a volunteer. i understand domestic violence to understand the victims of domestic violence and how they suffer. i am a mother of four daughters. i have four granddaughters, and i would not do anything, anything to weaken the rate statue. dan maffei knows that. is asked were deceptive, distorted, and they like to women. and worse yet, he stood behind the skirts of those victims of rape and that's reprehensible as a woman. >> moderator: ursala rozum, your response to this issue being a primary issue in this race, at least in terms of the

way it's been handled in the public television advertising. rozum: i think it's an issue that's been focused on in tv advertising because it's a very and osha issue, and for the record i am pro-choice dick and i think anything related to abortion or how to deal with rape as a woman's personal decision. i think we need to be focusing on issues that matter to us all, like the economy, like jobs, and talk about real solutions. and i think dan maffei's focus on this issue has been an attempt to avoid discussion come discussing real solutions to the economic crisis, how to get people back to work. has been a way to avoid discussing things like progressive taxation. because it's easy to hold onto an emotional issue and it's a lot more difficult to take on the kind of progressive policy solutions that will really turn around the economy. >> moderator: dan maffei. maffei: i know these are issues that people are accountable talking about necessary.

but i'm sorry, it's and ariza record that i think is important thing. rape is rape. it never should be parsed or any reason. ann marie buerkle cosponsored a bill that did just that. now, when i was in office she make sure i read every page of every bill of health care bill, thousands of pages of the. this was a three-page bill and her staff said when he found it a try to get rid of it. so it's not who you are, it's what you do that we have to look at. here she was in one of her first bills, this was the first full day of session and a first floor statement was on this bill. because it was on a particular social agenda. rape is rape. i know she's pro-life, that's fine. that's her right to be. but you shouldn't parse rate for any reason. not to deny some rape victims, you know, benefits and other rape victims not. i felt it was my responsibility

to make sure that ann marie buerkle's record is seeing. >> moderator: did it reflect a record? buerkle: no, i did not. he knows that if you been in congress for two years he understands the way it works. to you as good as use that forcible rape language for a long time. kirsten gillibrand, hillary clinton, chuck schumer, they all voted for the same language. when we saw that language we so this is a lot acceptable. rape is rape. with my background, with initiatives i've taken all my life being a pro bono attorney. here's the thing that no, but was ever taken on language that used forcible rape. that entire h.r. three have to do with whether not the federal government is going to fund abortion. at nothing, with exceptions of the case of rape and incest. dan knows that. he has distorted this view. he has distort my position and he owes an apology to everyone in this district who has been a victim of rape in us to listen to his accusations and his false charges. >> moderator: are you willing to apologize? maffei: the reason i brought

this issue up is because countless women from this district came to me and they said, ann marie buerkle is not doing the job of porting the economy. when she is here she talks about that but when she's in washington she follows this particular social issue agenda that she has. she sang as soon as they're she got rid of it. it's a three-page bill that everybody cosponsored you should be reading the it's a three-page bill. she knew that language was in there, and the reason she is against abortion, okay fine but she's against it in the case of rape and incest. i'm not covering that up. that's your position. so she's on opportunity to maybe make it so that someone who are raped couldn't get abortions. fine, but that's not what she is saying now. >> moderator: ursala rozum. rozum: we heard this discussion play out in the media, this back and forth on this issue of rape and abortion, and as a woman i think it's important to every life that lots of issues affect

women, and that it's not just reproductive rights that affect women. i want to hear us talk about climate change. i want to talk about the drug war that has led the u.s. to more prisoners than any other country in the world. with more african-americans in prison and than we had as slaves during, before the civil war pics i think we need to move forward answer to issues that affect everyone. >> moderator: our next issue is about energy, and we will start with ursala rozum. governor cuomo must to shut down indian point nuclear power point with supplies about a third of the electricity of new york city. do you support them in that effort? rozum: yes, i do support the governor to close indian point. i hope that he will take up a similar effort to eventually shut down the nuclear power plants along ontario. i think nuclear power, it's an energy source of the past. is expensive.

it should not be relying on federal subsidies anymore. the national academy of sciences has said that any level of radiation from a nuclear power plant is dangerous to our health. so we need to be moving forward. the costs of nuclear power are socialized, and the health care costs that we have are people that are exposed to radiation. i do support, i support governor cuomo's efforts and to support a transition to renewable clean energy economy, and save economy that does not rely on fossil fuels or nuclear power. >> moderator: dan maffei, would you support what the governor wants to do by closing indian point? maffei: there's no question we have to get to work towards a clean energy a comic book we're doing a lot of that research right here in central new york, our universities or at the clean tech center, at the tech garden. in terms of nuclear power, well, we do need to make sure that nuclear power is safe and make sure that it's environmentally

sound. i'm not sure we done that yet, but it wouldn't get rid of it until a gotten rid of coal and oil first. oil that we're dependent on other countries for, that we are beholden to them unfortunately, and coal that is so polluting and so damaging. so i do think there's some priorities. i also think with the local community wants, matters a lot. i don't live in indian point. i'm not running to represent indian point, so i do think we have to ask the constituents of their what they want. i talk to people where the power plants are, and there accountable with it and there's a lot of jobs. i do think it's very, very important. in indian point that might be a completely different situation and i think we have to ask the people there what they want to do. i presume the government is doing the. >> moderator: and two, trenton. ann marie buerkle, but we do, what you agree with what the governor wants to do about indian point, shut it down or not? buerkle: i do not and i don't think dan answered the question. this country needs a companies

of energy policy, which not just this administration, several administrations have failed to put together. and that energy policy needs to be all sources of energy. we need to do the things they think carefully why we protect the environment. we have reserves, with oil reserves in this country with natural gas reserves in this country. we should be encouraging the development of nuclear power plant. and if you talk to ontario, those communities embrace nuclear power. they see it as a safe, they see it as a clean energy source, and they're a great source of jobs. i am very much in favor of nuclear power. with all of energy development. it has to be reasonable. it has to be rational to it has to be people sitting down and talk about what's best for the committee versus what's going to pander to each agenda at the foreign. and some of these are emotional issues i think is a country we go to the american people to have a sound energy policy in

place. >> moderator: we have briefly touched on climate change. ann marie buerkle, do you think there's such a thing as global warming? buerkle: i think there is climate change. i've said that over and over again but what i don't agree with is that there has been a consensus on whether not and contributed global warming. what i do know is about to pass cap-and-trade, to pass, to vote for cap-and-trade as dan maffei did that would actually paralyze our businesses and increase their costs and decrease the availability of energy. it's the wrong way to go. there are reasonable approaches to develop energy in this country. we have to do it as a just mention in a reasonable manner or it doesn't hinder to either extreme but to find that ground in the middle that will make this country energy independent, giving all that's going on in the middle east we should be doing everything in our power to become energy independent. we can do that while we protect our environment, what we do what's right for the american people transcend so you believe there's climate change.

you're not sure it's because of man's interference with the climate. ursala rozum, how do you take a position on climate change and how it should affect our decisions in washington? rozum: i think climate change is one of the most serious threat facing my generation and future generations, even the pentagon has acknowledged the climate change is a series problem that is massively contributing to, in the un's intergovernmental panel on climate change that includes conservative countries that export oil have also agreed that humans are causing climate change. and i think as soon as we embrace the fact that we are contributing to the climate crisis, dirty energy, coal, fracking for gas, offshore oil drilling, the sooner we accept these realities we can start transition to renewable energy economy because there's no energy independence like renewable energy. the sun is free.

the wind is free, and there's four times as many jobs in the renewable energy sector as it is in the fossil fuel industry. according to a recent university of amherst study. as i think the time is now, acknowledge the problem and start moving forward. and my opponents seem to embrace the policies embraced by the parties leadership which is in all-of-the-above energy policy and that's not acceptable. >> moderator: dan maffei, is there such a thing as global warming? maffei: i do think we need to get to renewable energy economy. i think we need to phase out coal. i think we need to get all the foreign i think we needed to do this for future generations for the good of god's green earth. ann marie buerkle used as a shield as site is whether global warming but then assigned to said yes, it's there and it's man-made, and she did my to answer so i guess like todd akin and others, being in congress make you an authority on science. we do need to move off of these fossil fuels. we are doing that very work right here in central new york.

and yes where i taught him to private studies department, at the center for excellence, all sorts of private companies are doing this. and, frankly, i don't know what she's talking about the legislation i supported, even the national republican party put out a map and said it's going to increase energy costs in a lot of states, but to where it's going to lower them, new york and california. so i don't know where she is from because if she were from central new york she would be going toward a clean energy policy. instead she thought when she was in office to protect the coal industry. ann marie buerkle, we don't have any cold here. >> moderator: thank you, dan maffei. we will continue this thing, hydrofracking because your position among and with it or not. maffei: i think we need to continue the moratorium. at the very least we had a moratorium on hydrofracking into we have federal regulation from until it's under the federal clean water act that we make sure that there's clean water and center.

but personally i don't like we should ever have hydrofracking in upstate new york. i will tell you why. people say it will create jobs. i haven't seen too much evidence of that. maybe a temperature temperate job you are what it will do is disrupt the new wineries that are being, coming, spotting up along the finger lakes. the tourism that we have, the farming both conventional farming like gary and organic farming is now going on. we have a clean water economy. and i believe that our future is because of a clean water. so when politicians they we've got gold under our feet we need to exploit. i think what is is the clean water, not necessarily -- not necessary natural gas. buerkle: first of all let me clarify, cap-and-trade that dan cody ford is well-known. new york state would be desperately affected by increase in energy costs. his position on nuclear power was so let's let the local

government, let's let them make the decisions and the local communities, but with hydrofracking it's going to be federal politics can't have it both ways. i believe that the approach to hydrofracking needs be a well-thought-out reasoned approach to the epa has a steady it would be conducted by the end of issue. it's important for us to look at a steady coming to understand, to embrace, to do testing. i have an environmental advisory board, a panel of people who are opposed to fighting, for fracking, and to the group they say to me, it's a game changer but we got to do it carefully. we've got to do it thoughtfully. we can't pander to the extreme degree got to make sure we protect our environment. but also when we talk about energy policy we've got to make this country energy independent. that's the right thing to do for the american people. >> moderator: and ursala rozum. rozum: hydrofracking is the wrong thing to do for the american people, and i don't think that protecting our air and water and our claim is pending. i think think it's a responsible

approach to protecting the economy and the environment a central new york. and it's heartening to hear dan maffei say he is personally opposed to hydrofracking, and i would like him to join me in supporting legislation for a federal ban on hydrofracking just like they've done in france and in bulgaria. i've been to pennsylvania, and i talk to people that have had their wells polluted permanently, that have experience livestock as a result of fracking in their area. and right now the epa is horribly understaffed and unable to do all the examinations that a are required of us. so there really is no way to do hydrofracking safety. it's an oxymoron. i want to say to close that the green party presidential candidate jill stein is the only presidential candidate that supports and hydrofracking and the obama administration continues to support fracking. >> moderator: dan maffei, a rebuttal to what ann marie buerkle said about your energy thoughts. maffei: well, let's just talk

about something she support on her way out of congress. she supported a bill to protect the coal industry. as i just mention in a previous answer, the coal industry is a -- there are no jobs here the coal industry is by far the most polluting of all the energy industries. there's more radiation that comes out of coal miner comes of of a nuclear plant. but also know to protect the coal industry, she voted to weaken the clean water act. she says we shouldn't regulate anything. i think that hydrofracking, whether you're for it or against it, everybody will agree need to do it in the right way and that means regulations. buerkle: well, first of all, dan seems to think that because coal is in our district it doesn't affect gas prices but if you talk to women and to talk to families are, the cost of energy is national and international but it's a very important to develop as a nation, not state-by-state a good energy, a

good sound energy policy. two of my opposed talk about renewables. let's face reality. the green energy only accounts for about 2% of electricity that is being generated. it's not enough. we can't go back. we have to move forward with compromise, with well-thought-out position. rozum: ann marie buerkle's comments that will get you% of energy from renewables may have been correct a few years ago but it's no longer correct. we are not getting about 14% of our electricity from renewable energy, according to the u.s. energy information agency, and the cost of renewables continues to go down while the cost of fossil fuels, especially unconventional fossil fuels, is going up due to the high risk, to the stills, to the accidents that are going to happen if we fracking if we continue this policy of mountaintop mining. transit that is the question response section of our debate in the. were now turning to closing statements. we hear first from dan maffei. maffei: well, i want to thank

everybody for participating in this debate. is indeed has been a rough-and-tumble campaign. and i do have to say that i admire my opponent, and the other day ann marie buerkle and i were both the author of us were addressing a group of constituents on a few key issues. and ann marie buerkle got up and told them no other potential policy thing they wanted to raise the minimum wage. welcome i think would take more courage if she told no to her tea party people but i think would take more courage and she said no to her coal industry friends that are not an issue. we need to judge the candidates. i think everybody should, by what we do, not what we see. it's not who we are, it's our actions that will judges. when i was in office i thought and even since, i fought as hard as i can for the middle class to make sure that we do have a clean environment, to make sure also that the small businesses can thrive.

and mostly to make sure social security and medicare will be protected. i worked for daniel patrick moynihan. that's what he always taught me. it's very, very important that we remember that we in central new york, we have the solutions and a hand, we just need our fair shot. transept ursala rozum. rozum: thank you for this opportunity to discuss issues with my opponent. and i will close by saying that i believe, i'm the only progressive in the race you and i'm the only person that will work for real solutions, for a public jobs program to put his back to work right now, not down the road, when the job chris decide you want to great jobs for us. and only kid. will fight for a medicare for all system, to great health care as a human right. i'm the only candidate that supports funding for education, free public education through university. and i think we need new leadership in congress, we need progressive leadership and we also need progressive taxes.

neither of my opponents tax plans would actually address the deficit. we can raise $1.2 trillion of flashes deficit through progressive taxation like we had in the eisenhower years. i will close by saying that our people and our plan, we need actions and we commitment and that's why i ask voters to vote for me on november 6 because real solutions can't wait. >> moderator: ann marie buerkle. buerkle: thank you again for this opportunity. when i ran for office three years ago i made a pledge to the district, it will have to be compact and for. we promise we will be accessible, responsible, accountable and independent. we've had 40 plus town hall meetings. with a 60 mobile download units. we have been, we've met with hundreds of people in its history, farmers, business owners, women, seniors. we have been accessible and would have been accountable to the people. we been responsible with taxpayer dollars to recover budget and her own office by 5% and than 6% this year. we get back at the edit 2011

over $100,000 of taxpayer money back to the general budget. we have been responsible with taxpayer dollars. i have been independent. i've had the courage to stand up to leadership and say no, that law isn't good for my district. i voted for the budget control act budget control act. i voted for simpson-bowles to find compromise and to do with this budget and its debt crisis. we can go back in this district to a representative of as extreme liberal values, who is disconnected from the district like dan maffei was in his two years in congress. i have been honored by being the representative from this district. i respectfully ask for the listeners vote on november 6 so i can continue to be the voice for upstate new york and washington. thank you so much for this opportunity to. >> moderator: we want to take the candidates for the time and a willingness to share their ideas and i want to thank you for watching this election 2012 debate. goodnight. >> wednesday from the bridge

house of commons, prime minister's question time. because of daylight savings time in the uk, this week prime minister's questions will air at 8 a.m. eastern instead of it you shall 7 a.m. you can see it live here on c-span2. >> them and we have a pretty simple proposition. you can either embrace the kind of approach that congresswoman wilson has embraced. chief scientist pledged to support the cut, cap and balance program. that's a tea party approach to balancing the budget. it has no new revenues, even for the wealthiest of americans. and it is so draconian that it would require deep cuts in social security and medicare over time. or we can embrace a balanced approach. that's what i support. i think we can go back to the kind of tax rates went under the the clinton administration when the upper income earners were doing well in the entire economy was growing. we're going to have to make some tough choices. and a balanced approach is the only approach i believe will get

us there. >> your rebuttal. spent it is amazing to me congressman heinrich that you can stand here, having voted 4 trillion-dollar deficits for the last four years, the largest, fastest debt increase in america's history and say that we have to control spending. you do nothing to control spending. and with respect to cut, cap and balance come is amazing to me also that the idea of cutting will spending, passing to build of congress to spend money we don't have, and balancing the budget is extreme. i think it could force congress to spend priorities and stop funding things like solyndra and prioritize things like social security, medicare and education. that's why i support a balanced budget enemy to the constitution. >> the race to succeed retiring new mexico senator jeff bingaman is just one of the key how senate and governor's races you can follow on c-span. c-span radio, and at

cspan.org/campaign2012. >> fordham law school in new york city held a daylong conference focusing on the balance between government secrecy, transparency and public access to information. national security reporters and law professors analyze national security leaks, including military drone strikes, enhanced interrogation programs, and wikileaks. this event hosted by the center of national security is an hour 30 minutes. >> [inaudible] >> this panel promises to be every bit as electric as the earlier ones, and i think you might not imagine. i want to welcome the moderator, david mccraw, it was new to the

center. he has never been to before and i hope this is the first of many such events as. he has one of the most unknown and important jobs that you can imagine. and i'm not sure how to describe it. he probably won't, but he is the assistant general counsel for "the new york times." and vice president. so his job is to tell them, in other words, what they can do and what they can't do, and to think about things from libel all the way to the issues surrounding leaks. and as you know from reading "the new york times" and other papers of the past few years, from the wikileaks scandal to other issues that have been numerous occasions in which he's probably spent a number of sleepless nights. and i think you're going to read much into him and this panel. so join me in welcoming the panel and david mccraw. [applause] >> thanks, karen.

anybody who's worked for the new york times notes that my job cannot be involved tell people what to do. i try, i try. on the panel today, to let the david pozen to the far left, i wanted on the far left, associate professor at columbia university lost the. former special advisor to the state department. scott horton is seated next to him. scott is legal affairs national security contributor to harper's magazine, adjunct faculty now a glimmer loss go, one of the people the right to great deal about this it. and next to me, scott shane, national security reporter for the washington bureau of the new york times. i've been told i'm supposed to interrupt everybody. now has been told and read me. but looking forward to trying to move this conversation along, address what i think it certainly from my side of the aisle, an interesting issue which is, how does this play out

when there's information classified the incident hands of the press, one of the legal paradigms that should govern that, how it should work as a practical matter in the real world. i combat this issue in a variety of ways. i currently am litigating on behalf of "the new york times" the foia suit to obtain what we believe actually exist, although the government denies, refuses to say, that is the legal memo underlying the drone strikes. some of my colleagues and the aclu have similar lawsuits were here so as well. but probably the way i most, pointedly was involved in this issue was with wikileaks. on june 23, 2010, i received a call from bill keller's secretary to come to be the that was about to take place. i was at the oral surgeon bleeding heavily, and had gauze in my mouth. i explained to her that the oral

surgeon hadn't gone well and maybe i could come with the she said no, you want to come now. so i came in a continued to bleed for the rest of the day. nothing help me at that meeting. and meeting was around the idea that we're going to get copies of the first set of wikileaks cable took over the next month, leading up to july 25, 2010, when the times published the first set of wikileaks documents, you can imagine from my perspective, as was from journalist perspective, it was an incredibly busy time. i tried to understand, did we -- i tried to understand what the exceptions could be found in what the pentagon papers taught, but all those cases came to me. and he was fairly momentous on july 25 when we first released those. and as a large of a sense, what happens now?

than no prior restraint. but what happens now? what's going to be the consequences for press law, for liability, for national security? and what happened after july 25 is exactly what usually happens in these situations. i got invited to be on panels all over the world. to talk about the issue but that was about it. we never heard from the government. and what i found was that wikileaks will begin certified inkblot, ever shocked test of what you cared about. that went around and talk about it. when i was in china, a professor in china raised a question after i, i talk about how the new york times was very careful in publishing these and concerned about not harming national security, not identified, not exposing confidential informants and others would help the u.s. government or allies in afghan stand. and this chinese professor raised his hand and said, well,

did you call the taliban to find out to real, real -- to reveal their secrets? why are you taking sides? i acted like i did know what the translator had said it. [laughter] when i got to hungry, hungry, a country that understands about secrecy and understands the abuse that can be done in the name of secrecy in government saturday. first question was, do you think the u.s. congress will change for you or not they see how valuable this information is. i think it's safe to say that was not the first thing for congress to change foia. i was happily got back to the is and was with the prosecutor, former prosecutor said can we agreed it would be a really good thing for "the new york times" to be indicted so we can clarify the espionage act? [laughter] no, we can agree on that.

-- we can't agree on the. you go back to the pentagon papers, alexander bickle, a lawyer from the times talked about what he saw as disorderly situation, the government should have broad powers to keep people, to keep secrets. but once the but once the secrets cross over to the press, the prison should have brought freedom to publish it. referred to as a disorder situation. not an ideal situation, not a perfect situation by situation that works. and i think that part of that is also sort of an indecision bargain on the government side, as occasions, leakers, prosecutions of publishers would be exceedingly rare. and on the press side there would be responsibility, if you will. you now see some of the bargain breaking down, or least that's what want to address with the panel that you now have six prosecutions of leakers in the

obama administration, three prior, after three prior prosecutions. you now have a press that is not just the new york times the duchess "washington post" but wikileaks, individuals no longer needing the mainstream media to put documents formerly classified documents into the public environment. so it's a changing landscape on both sides. different kind of media i think different attitude in government are at least that's what it appears to us, the rising concerns about terrorism and concern for government secrecy. and the ability to transfer large amount of data electronically. if you think back to the pentagon papers, daniel ellsworth has to come to "the new york times" for a paper like new times to get the leak out. and that was the only way to make them public. when the government wanted to do terrible things to daniel ellsberg of action had to send people to break into a

psychiatrist office. no longer necessary. the government now has other tools for doing this kind of things. it seems very old-fashioned, doesn't? but what i really wanted to start the panel, how things have really changed in our lakes more serious threat now? how the prosecutions shut off the flow of information to the public? is a time to give more legal protection? is the time to clarify the espionage act them and cheap we visit this thing for classification but so have things changed and if so, what should we do about a? i will start with -- everybody has been named david r. scott on this panel. >> thanks. it's an honor to be here. thanks to karen and the center r for having me, to be an and scots. so there's so much to say here that it's going to be tough times come are maybe it's just that i'm an academic that but i think my charges to kind of frame the conversation a bit with some more legal context,

and in opening marks i thought it would try to make two main points. or establish two main propositions to get us going. the first is just how remarkably rarely the laws against leaking have been enforced in this country. in light of what the laws permit and what political rhetoric might suggest. and the second point is that we can't understand this negligible enforcement rate without think about the ways in which the executive branch benefits from being leaky as a systemic practice. first on just how rare formal sanctions are against leakers relative to the universal potentially actionable leaks. there've only been, by most people's account nine prosecutions of leakers to the media in u.s. history. i think that figure may be a little wrong but it's roughly nine. never, a journalist has never

been prosecuted. administrative sanctions might be thought to be a major backstop. they are a lot easier to bring to the government. if criminal prosecutions are tough to bring. it's tough to know exactly what administered practice has been in this area, but all evidence suggests administered a formal sanctions against leakers are also very rare. there's a long line of government studies that have suggested that point. there are very few press reports of people being formally disciplined for leaking, not withstand that those press reports would have significant deterrent value for a government concerned to depress leaking rates. notwithstanding the media's interest of protecting its sources against reprisal and notwithstanding that disciplined employees interest in claiming whistleblower status but for all those reasons you might expect more publicity about administrative sanctions of leakers, if they had occurred. i've also submitted a bunch of foia request for research on doing. not all returns are in, but

they, too, suggest that leakers throughout the us government are very rarely formally punished. the second point is that there are lots of leaks of classified information. i doubt i need to provide much foundation for that point to this audience, but a government report calderwood report in calderwood report interagency task force in 1982 called classified information leaks, daisy, a routine daily occurrence in washington. so the claim that is they are daily. the wmd commission's public report of 2005 referred to hundreds of serious press release -- leaks of classified every for the past decade alone. the third point is that for peace's argument is most of the classified information lead to potentially prosecutable. the willard report again from 1982 in virtually all cases, the unauthorized disclosure of classified information potentially violates one or more

federal statutes. the espionage act which is the main statute involved has a lot of ambiguities. i won't rehash here, but generally have to prove that the defendant knew his or her actions were unlawful, that the information was not already in the public domain, and in some circumstances you have to show potential damage to the national security from the disclosure. courts have defined the term national security broadly to implicate most foreign relations information. but given that stand for classified a document isn't just the dems to national security, and that no court has ever accepted a defense of an proper of a document, and that millions of federal employees sign nondisclosure agreements when they're ready and classified programs, saying that they realize that disclosure of the classified information will damage the national security, it's actually quite hard to see why most disclosures of classified info aren't at least potentially prosecutable under

the espionage act main section. moreover, this not just the espionage act. there are a number of the statutes, criminal statutes. perhaps most notably 18 -- is the general that and conversion statute. it criminalizes a theft conversion of property or other things of value of the u.s. government. most circuits, although there's some split, reader that should cover intangible information including classified information as well as tangible documents. so 641, and most of the country, seems like you could catch all classified information leaks, and much more. and, finally, the whistleblower laws are very little protection for defendants in these cases. in no circumstances do the unauthorized disclosure of classified information directly to the public. steve has written a program that. so you put all this together and although i just said about the frequency of lease, and how they

can be prosecuted, and how really they are, and you end up with a tremendous enforcement rate. at least on the criminal side. gary ross, a student of leaks, estimate with 0.3% of all potentially indictable classified information leaks do get indicted in u.s. history. that was using an extremely conservative estimate of what the university potential prosecution of leaks is wanted in public or enough by this government to have occurred, and then refer to the justice department. the real rate is probably close to zero. so even with the recent uptick in these prosecutions under this administration, but it's been branded a war against leakers by a lot of people, each with more of a special operation. and just statistically i think that point helps, but to provide some context. they're still very, very rare. that's not to minimize the significance of what's happened

but i think scott shane will talk about, not to suggest is not an important new development but statistical perspective might be useful. so been a puzzle arises. why is there so little enforcement against leakers, if i'm right about alvida sein, and time doesn't permit me a full answer, but let me just a quickie, i think the standard reason that you here, are insufficient. so you too many things. the first thing you here, this this came out the first panel display, is it so difficult to catch a leakers. they conceal their actions, they are operating in secrecy. that is some truth to what i think but is unsatisfied on several levels. first, someone other than the leader knows who leaked, and almost every leaky from and that's the journalist. doj hasn't since 1970 had a very restrictive policy that is self-imposed, not constitutionally mandated, making it extra difficult to the been a journalist pickens also came out this winter to come

happened a few dozen times. administrations have also foregone certain powerful and gustatory tools to get at a leakers. ronald reagan famously or infamously in the early 1980s proposed a systematic program of polygraphs for all prospective the cases and every official who meets with the media in the context in which classified information could come up with have to give prior notice of the meeting and then write up a report and submit them afterwards about what was discussed. there was huge backlash from the press but from within the administration against the proposal. they've never been implemented. polygraphs are used by some agencies in some circumstances but they're not the norm. finally, even not within the restrictions that have been put on its work, doj has had some success in catching leakers when they been brought to doj's attention. we don't have much public data but we know from 2005-2009, doj initiated 26 investigations of

leaks that were referred to it from the intelligence community, and that it identified a suspect in 14 of the 26 cases. there may be some selection. i assumed the fbi does have open investigations, but i'm still, 14 and 46 is a decent success rate. that's just many more leakers can be caught within standard resource constraints. quickly, i will just say that the other thing you hear that is so tough to bring these prosecutions, this came out this one as well, national security might be put at risk by the very act of bring these prosecutions if you need to disclose some information to prove your case one thing to say about that is of course the classified information seizures act was designed in 1980 specifically with these dilemmas in mind. it may not be perfect but there's at least a burden on those who say it's not working to show why. moreover, if you bring a leak

prosecution and free travel is by the judge, either for your prosecution over national security reasons, free agreements to exist as a backstop to the trade case that has already come up, resulted in a relatively conviction for drake your and so is widely described as a failure of the prosecution of the leaker. but in terms of the actual experience punishment for someone who is accused of being a leaker, as most deterrent effect of other would be leakers, it's still a powerful success for the government and even though a plea was all that was obtained. moreover, there are the statutes can not just the espionage act, particularly than 641 statute which can be charged with less national security risk. there's even more evidence of a government non-advertising enforcement against leakers i would see. one is that only a fraction of classified information leaks ever get referred to doj. this is been alluded to in prior testimony by doj officials.

is a good the cia and cn i make referrals. almost no other component ever does. if the steeple on the as the notch act are too clumsy and that's were not being able to bring successful cases, you would suspect some white house to prioritize legislative reform. no one else ever has. in fact president clinton vetoed a major legislation in 2000 that would have strengthened the espionage act significantly. ..

>> the missing piece of the discussion is that the executive branch benefits in various effects from a systematic practice of being permissive about leaks. that doesn't mean certain particular leaks might not be destructive or worthy of our criticism on whatever grounds, but i'm talking here as a general practice. um, very quickly, why might that be the case, um, one reason is that being permissive about leaks allows you to have a more robust ability to what some journalists call plant stories. if you want to make authorized disclosures but informally unattributed of classified information from the white house, you can't be too vigorous in your crackdown on the unauthorized december closures -- disclosures. why is that? imagine a world where the executive branch cracked down on non-white house-authorized leaks. we would become very suspicious about every unattributed

disclosure we saw in the white house because we would expect if it wasn't white house authorized, it would most often yield some kind of observable sanction like a prosecution. this also gets to a puzzle raised by marty in the previous panel where marty says it's all about not official acknowledgment. the white house wants to plant stories so as to get information out there about what it's doing without officially acknowledging them. but marty raises a question. if everyone knows that all these things we see in the newspaper are tantamount to official acknowledgment, then the whole game collapses, right? unless people are almost silly in their level of formalism here. so how do you preserve that constructive ambiguity about whether this disclosure really is a functional u.s. acknowledgment or not? you have to allow the system to some given authorized or quasi-authorized leaking.

most of them are not authorized by a rogue actor. most actually occur in this middle space between full presidential authorization and no authorization, thereby assistant secretaries at the state department, defense department, who it's ambiguous to the extent to which they're authorized or not to implicitly or explicitly speak with the press. these officials who i think are the majority of leakers would expose the match nations -- machinations, and so on, and they would yield dubious national security benefits because these are not, again, rogue actors who are striking out unilaterally. these are people who are deeply acculture rated to the norms. they have internalized some red lines about stuff they won't talk about. these are people who on multiple

levels are tough to prosecute. finally, there's literature on leaks within formal communication within the executive branch how they allow you to bypass the awkwardness and cumbersomeness of formal channels. a great quote from secretary haig, by the end of the administration we had converted "the new york times" and washington post into our white house bulletinner -- bulletin boards. [laughter] leaks, i think, serve a strategic precommitment funk. there's a lot of executive power scholar that's said you have to signal to the public you're acting in law-abiding, responsible ways. how do you do that with such a bloated classification system? one way's through leakiness. if we all expect basically anything vile that the executive

branch does basically will come out, it actually in some sense increases our faith in the government that it's not doing truly prodid crouse things. i think, finally, it staves off more reform. the executive branch is not forced to address the massive overclassification b pork in part -- problem in part buzz congress and the media feel adequately served by our system, they're getting the info they need to learn. so in sum, i think the situation we have while david referred to it using bickel's language is actually a lot more rational than maybe it seems on its surface, and we should be swept call of -- skeptical of claims this is some kind of a suicide ago bind we've gotten ourselves into in the way we have so much leaking. the executive branch has in many senses blessed the status quo. >> david, i would have cut you

off sooner if i knew you were going to quote alexander haig, but you surprised me. [laughter] it just came out of nowhere. let me just follow up with one question though because you have managed to transform this into a nice discussion of the leaky situation, i want to go back to the prosecution. and i say this just to promoak version about it -- provoke questions about it, thoughts about it. isn't it a little bit like the study that showed there were very few beating of slaves, and the conclusion was that slavery must have been a humane system because not that many slaves were beaten. but you don't have to beat many slaves to have slaves conform to the master's will. isn't it true strategic prosecutions have a much wider effect on the nonprosecuted? >> so, um, it's an important question. the -- one response is that, um, you might fear that whatever little observable sanctioning that happens is so thoroughly internalized within the system

that you just don't need to bring cases. that hypothesis is not consistent with the volume of leaks that seem to occur. people don't seem cowed. but i think it's right. i could give a long answer, but shortly i'll say i think, basically, there's a two-stage or two-level enforcement system the executive branch has devised. most leakers and officials at a senior level are not subject to prosecution. they are, therefore, not going to be could, not deterred. they are, however, subject to informal sanction. there are a lot of stories and reports of people who are -- and interviews i've done bear this out -- who are excluded from meetings, they're not promoted, they're marginalized because they're seen of to have leaked in the wrong sort of respects. the lower level of the executive branch really does not want to be leaking at all, are subject to criminal or administrative sanctions. i think a lot of them are

feeling a little more cowed. they are, and there's a sense in which this may be an optimal deterrent system for the executive branch if we can surgically go after thomas drake and chill a whole lot of people around himment i think that's plausible. what it doesn't speak to is the more senior level of government where at least i'm proposing much of the action occurs. >> and we will come back to that, but scott horton, i could tell, was ready to jump in at many places. so the opportunity has come. >> maybe i'll just start with a bit of a plug. we just heard, i think, a great presentation that looks at the sociology of the situation, cuts through to the realities of the way bureaucracies and political actors work and puts an overlay of the law on top of that. and if i had to give you some assigned reading for this function, i'd definitely assign an article that this man recently published in the stanford law review called "deep

secrecy." i think it's one of the smartest, best works on the subject. so you should all look it up. now, i'm going to try to make a case for a different framing of these issues. we're talking about leaks here, it sounds like a ship that isn't seaworthy somehow. i don't think that's really the issue we should be focused on. what we really need to address is the quality and nature of our democracy and what we expect in it. and i think pulling back a little bit we see in the interplay of secrecy concepts really a sort of power play. we see a realignment of political decision making within our society in which people who have the supersecret decoder ring, you know, the highest level of national security classification, are the only people who have access to the

vital information that enables them to participate in discussion and decisions about high-level national security matters. and that means, and i think this is an increasing problem that has resulted in the space available for public discussion and public participation in those issues shrinking tedly. and this is -- steadily. and this is something we need to be worried about. it's something quite fundamental. and, in fact, we've had a few historical fights here, khrushchev and a couple others. i think we need to go back to a couple models, in fact, i think we need to go back to the fourth and fifth centuries b.c., greece, and look at how they viewed democracy, what was the essence of democracy? there's a fascinating fragment, a speech given by a philosopher in which he gives a sort of creation myth. i mean, this man now is being

cited by philosophers of greek history in the classical age as the prime expositiver the of athenian democracy in the period, and he gives a creation myth for democracy. he says humanity originally was victimized by forces of nature and wild beasts and by other human beings and that humans had to assemble together in communities for their own security. so he says collective security is the essential reason for the state. then he gives a myth involving -- which is sort of a repelling of the prometheus legend. i don't mean the one in the current motion picture, by the way, although it may not be a far off semblance of it. in which he says zeus, the god, decided to give gifts to humanity, and he arranged for these gifts to be distributed broadly amongst the entire population because cities cannot be performed if only a few have

these arts, he says. and he refers to this as the political technique or skill. and that is democratic dialogue, what we today know is democratic dialogue. the idea that you have skills, knowledge spread diffusely amongst the population, the population coming together engaging in discussion can come to the best solution and the best answers principally for their own defense. and finally, he says, if the city's going to prosper, if the state's going to prosper and if it's going to survive, it has to effectively form ways of pooling these resources and channeling them into correct decisions. and it's very, very clear throughout he's thinking about national security as the principal thing that people are discussing. and, in fact, we know through quite recent historical research that in prominent greek democracy of this age, especially in athens, when assemblies of people came

together and they were discussing issues, very frequently they were discussing questions of war and peace; whether to go to war, whether to make peace and what terms to make peace. and they were discussing deeply and profoundly questions of accountability of their own leaders who were engaged in national security decision making; did they exercise fair judgment, did they do the right thing? and the public, as we know in that era, was a very, very harsh judge of these things. so i think this gives us a marker against which we can measure our own democracy that's really quite radically different. and i think in our day today these accountability processes have really fallen apart. they've become extremely weak. that's approaching a crisis. now, in fact, we have sort of a triangle, and the greeks talked about this too, secrecy, privacy and pub publicity. and every state has got these three different characteristics

in different measures. and the way these three qualities are doled out and measured defines the nature of the state. so, for instance, we're told that in a state where the leaders are allowed to make public, allowed to make decisions about the affairs of the state in secret but the citizens, the ordinary citizens have no privacy -- they're always subject to intrusion by the leaders -- that system is called a tyranny. and a democracy is defined as a state in which the affairs of the state are public, to be known by all and for all the people to participate in important decisions and resolutions whereas the affairs of individual citizens are private and are shielded.

i think these are, you know, very, very powerful models. and i think we should look at how we have dealt and how we have reallocated the situation. we have a situation in the united states today where increasingly national security affairs are being privatized. the number of individuals who are allowed to participate in making those decisions is fewer and fewer whereas the space for private individuals is no longer nearly so screened from intrusion by the state as was the case historically. and i think if we look at major questions that we have faced recently, we see the reflection of this process. so, for instance, i mean, things that we have been discussing this morning, drones. drone warfare is a process that's being dominated now by jsoc and by the cia, it's covert warfare. therefore, it seems to have been withdrawn from the table of

matters that can be discussed even at a policy level in a meaningful way as a part of our political process and our democratic process. secrecy is playing a very important role many that process. in that process. we also have matters like the war that was waged in libya which i think marks some very, very disturbing precedence because we had no oval office speech by president obama, we had no meaningful consultation of congress, we had no public debate about it. a terrible precedent for us. and we're looking at possible conflicts in the future involving iran and syria, for instance, again in which intelligence and the manipulation of intelligence by political figures plays a huge role. so we're talking about leaks, but i'm focused on having an

informed public that can participate in a democratic discussion. and i don't think leaks is really the correct frame for it. but i think wikileaks, if we look back at it, it's, i think, proving to be a very, very useful example of the government's tendency to hype the dangers that result from disclosure of this information and to overstate the risks that result. because i think we can go back, we heard secretary gates' statement read in one of the earlier panels which i think was an important statement. actually, he also said that charges that those who have leaked the information have blood on their hands were hyperbole, he said. not true. and i think gates has this just right. but unfortunately, the government as a whole was obsessed with this drum beat of gloom and doom.

and when we go back and look at what happened with wikileaks, it's obviously a mixed bag. there were obviously cases where individuals were embarrassed by things that were disclosed. there may be some people who legitimately perceive a bit of a threat, but by and large that's not the case. by and large, i think, the public benefited from having this information put on the table. and by and large, i think, the disclosure reaped more benefits than harms for the united states. and i say this based on discussions with a number of political figures abroad who tell me as one head of state in africa recently told me, he was shocked to see that, my god, this government really does care about corruption and really does care about transparency. and it was in all these cables, and they were actually acting up on the things that they were reflecting. so i think it did wonders for the u.s. reputation at the end of the day. >> scott, obviously, i agree

with much of what you said, but i wonder if you could come back to a question i have when the -- that troubles me. as much as i like scott shane and as much as i trust my own judgment, nobody elected us to decide whether national security was going to be jeopardized. isn't there something fundamentally wrong under rule of law scenario where you're now taking those decisions out of government and putting them in private hands to decide, have scott shane and the likes of scott decide whether this is going to harm national security, whether to reveal this secret or not? >> no, i think it's problematic. we have to start by acknowledging that every government does have legitimate secrecy claims and that governments should try to maintain certain secrets, diplomatic secrets, military secrets are the obvious sorts discussed even in the first congress. and the idea that individual citizens will make up their own minds if the claim of secrecy is

bogus is problematic. however, we have thousands and thousands of cases historically now where we can show that, in fact, the claim of secrecy was bogus, and disclosures served legitimate democratic ends. so i think there's no easy solution to this. i think what we really have to -- the fundamental problem we have right now is that we've constructed a system where there's no downside for claiming security classifications. and if we're ever going to get a handle on the problem of gross overclassification, it's got to be creating a new m -- system in which there are risks to a civil servant making a decision to classify something that shouldn't be classified. >> um, scott shane, the challenge has been thrown down. we started quoting alexander haig, we went to the athenian philosophers. [laughter] i don't know how you're going to raise the bar here, but i'm supposed to ask you how you feel.

[laughter] you can go from there -- >> i feel intimidated. i'm going to have to bring us back from the fifth century b.c. to 2012. i guess the question i'd like to briefly raise is, you know, i sort of agree with david pozen, and i disagree in a couple ways that i'll mention. but are we -- we have worked out over the decades a sort of jury-rigged system where the government relates to the press, the press relates to the people, and we sort of chug along. and, um, and i'm wondering whether in two different ways we're undermining that system. one is with this proliferation of leak prosecutions, the other is with the rise of what i would call, um, public but classified information. so, first, let me go back and read something that a washington bureau colleague wrote. some of you may recognize this. about how journalism works in

washington. without the use of, quote, secrets, unquote -- putting in quotes because, you know, that's what the government calls these thing, classified information, in other words -- without the use of secrets, there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted either abroad or in washington, and there could be no mature system of communication between the government and the people. that was written, um, in a brilliant affidavit in 1971 by max frankel, then the washington bureau chief, later the editor of "the new york times." just, i quote it only to say that that is absolutely true to this day. and this sort of board system that we have where certain things are designated as secret, but we continue to write about them, um, i think has actually proven quite functional over the decades. and that's what i'm a little worried about, that this sort of strange con seven us the that operated for many years may be breaking down a little bit.

i would not, i would not and none of my colleagues would deny that there are legitimate secrets that need to be protected, and we sometimes take a lot of flak at "the new york times" from bloggers and others who think that we are too kowtowed by the government. but it is generally our practice if we have, you know, any kind of story that we call if it's about a government agency, call the agency, say what about this, we're going to write this, and they have an opportunity to say, oh, my god, you know, that will -- the world will end if you print that, and then we kind of, you know, listen to them and make a decision. and i found myself in the very peculiar situation when we were publishing the wikileaks diplomatic cables, these 250,000 diplomatic cables that we had gotten through wikileaks of being the person who was assigned to actually redact the cables, in most cases to protect people who, you know, i actually

consult with the the state department, and they would make the case that, you know, this chinese professor, this russian dissident would be in grave danger if we named them. that all fell by the wayside because we could eventually put all the cables out unexplicated. and i would agree that the government's warnings about the dangers of that were, you know, have by and large proven overblown. but let's, let's look at barack obama and what i would consider his, you know, he hasn't said much about this, but in a way the administration's inconsistency on this subject. everybody knows about enhanced interrogation techniques described by some as torture as used by the cia under the bush administration at the so-called black sites. everybody knows about the so-called warrantless wiretapping by the national security agency under the bush

administration. both of those were only brought to light by, quote, leaks, unquote. if somebody hadn't tuck his or her neck out -- stuck his or her neck out, risked, in principle, prison to talk about those things, we might not know about them today. barack obama ran against, certainly, the enhanced interrogation techniques. he based, you know, a considerable portion of the national security component of his campaign on running against these programs that he knew about, we knew about or he could talk about only by virtue of leaks. so that makes it particularly ironic that there have been six cases, you know, by most counts double the number you should -- double the number under all previous prime ministers, and -- presidents, and that's what i think is potentially beginning to chill reporting, chill sources from talking to reporters and, you know, sort of break down this system that

we've been talking about. um, the, you know, long ago i was in moscow during the last years of soviet power and the collapse of the soviet system, and i later wrote a book, the premise of which was partly that excessive secrecy, dysfunctional secrecy was one of the reasons that the soviet union was upside mined. undermined. and we're not quite at that level, but it is amazing how often i have seen in recent years absolutely ridiculous examples of classification. just to give you a couple examples, there's a guy named ali sufan who was an fbi agent, one of the early fbi agents focused on al-qaeda, and he wrote a memoir last year called "the black flag," and the cia and the fbi, as you know, have a kind of decades-long feud about just about everything. and the cia got ahold of his

book and decided that it needed to clear the manuscript and took a lot of the things out of the manuscript. the kind of things it took out, he is well known, had written publicly about being involved early on in questioning one of the first of the so-called high-value terrorists caught in 2002. and, but that was considered to be secret even though everybody knew about it. he had written op-eds about it, by the cia so the cia took out the personal pronouns from that chapter. so instead of saying i packed my suitcase when i got this phone call and, you know, headed out, it says blank packed blank's suitcase. [laughter] so that's -- we actually paid -- you, the taxpayer, paid someone to go through that book and take that stuff out. [laughter] one other example that seems to me equally absurd although it's

less easy to understand is that the cia has triumphed over a guy named jefferson morley who's been fighting for years to declassify records relating to the assassination of john f. kennedy. you would think that by now stuff that happened in 1963, the cold war's over, most of the people involved back then are dead, that it might be safe to let out some of these secrets. but they have fought successfully in court to keep hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of things secret that seem to bear at least an indirect relationship to the kennedy assassination. it's kind of fascinating. i wonder what's in there myself. finally, there is this category called, that i call publicly-classified information, the drone strikes being a prime example. cyber offense, cyber attacks are another one now that's sort of emerging as drone strikes did,

as targeted killing did. and it's following a similar pattern. i think what you have is events that occur on the ground such as stuff blowing up, people being killed, that you can't deny. so information comes out about it, but there are till these formal -- still these formal restrictions on who can say what. the very strange result of that is i can talk about drones, in fact, we can all talk about drones except for possibly david because -- [laughter] he was a government employee, and may be restricted in what he says. most significantly, congress cannot talk publicly about drones. so you have this very strange situation where the u.s. has embarked on a perhaps god, perhaps bad but certainly are important new kind, using this new kind of technology in a ethically and legally very dicey, disputed area.

and no, there has never been a public debate in congress on this. ditto for offensive cyber attacks. we see stuxnet, you know, stuxnet got reported. my colleague, david sanger, wrote about that it was part of a big, a wider range of programs called olympic games. but we have embarked again on a new technology in a very, you know, hazardous in the view of many experts area. we're setting a precedent in many countries. congress has not been able to talk about that because it's classified. we can talk about it, they can't. so you have this strange breakdown of what would normally be the sort of functioning government in a democracy. the final thing i'll say is that we talk about, um, leaks as endangering, you know, people,

programs, government operations. it's very interesting to talk to tom cain, former governor of new jersey, who was the chairman of the national 9/11 commission, investigated the 9/11 attacks. if you ask him what, you know, what made us vulnerable to 9/11 eleven years ago, was it leaks or was it secrecy, he'll tell you it was secrecy. it was excessive secrecy that made us vulnerable to the worst terrorist attack in american history. it was not leaks. if there had been more leaks, you know, he would argue we would have been, we would have had a far better chance of stopping this attack. so i think that's where, you know, the danger -- david is absolutely right that six cases, as someone said earlier, six cases out of 300,000 criminal cases is not a lot, but they do

have a very serious chilling effect which i experience in my work every day. sometimes when you call someone and you get a black humor response like, oh, yeah, i'm going to tell you like that, i'm going to end up like tom drake who did not go to jail, ended up with community service but meanwhile, basically, lost his house, you know, went into bankruptcy and had his life turned upside down and his career completely derailed. he was a high-level nsa official, he's now working at the apple store in bethesda. so that is a serious chilling effect, believe me, for the many people we talk to for our job. thanks. >> scott, you managed to meet the challenge. david had talked about, quoted alexander hague, scott quoted the greek philosophers, you quoted your own book. [laughter] that was really masterful. let me press back on this. you know, every time i raise this idea whether leakers need more protection, whether the prosecutions are bad the

response i got from one washington reporter was leakers don't look up pentagon pape ors and decide what the -- papers and decide what the law says. they don't look up morrison, they don't look up the aipac decision by judge ellis. they're motivated by other things. they don't do that. and you look over "the new york times" over the last few days, leaks about libya and so forth, isn't david right that leaking continues on apace? >> yes, absolutely. i mean, you know, and i wouldn't even call it leaking. i would just say that it's the normal business of government, you know, explaining things to the press or through the press to the people. you know, leak always makes it sound like there's something illicit about it, whereas i think it's sort of the foundation of the way our country operates. but i have to say and i think most of my colleagues would support this, there have been several instances where we and others, other reporters have made a determined effort to find

out certain things, and five years ago we think we might have been able to find it out, and now we've had real trouble. and i'll just give you one example. there's something called section 215 of the patriot act which probably everybody here knows since we're at a law school, it's the business records section of the patriot act. five senators, i believe -- if i'm not miscounting -- have made cryptic statements saying that this provision is being misused and misused in a way that would alarm americans and outrage americans if they only knew how it was being used. i and many of my colleagues have sought to find out what the heck they're talking about, and we still don't know. so, um, you know, i suppose maybe someone would say we shouldn't know because it's classified, but i have a feeling that, you know, it's very tantalizing when a senator says the public would be outraged if they knew what i know, and you're not able to find out.

that's sort of impressive, and that's a little bit of a change in the atmosphere. >> scott horton, let me go back to you because scott shane made a point which reinforced a little bit of what david said which is that don't we know about the drones? using that as an example, hasn't the system worked in the sociological way that david sketched out that there has been significant leaks, and what is it that remains to be known? >> well, readers of the new york times know about the drones, i guess. [laughter] i think we can say that. no, i think, i think journalists have done their work in developing a lot of information about what our national security apparatus thinks, how it's motivated and how it's acting. i think that's true. but what we, but we have not had fundamental policy discussions in the country that we need to have. and i think, and i think we can

define that along many different lines. but for me the key issue is, um, if we look at what's going on in many pakistan, for instance, you know, we have the cia engaged on a traditional, in the traditional theater of war in what historically have been viewed as military tacticsover a sustained -- over a sustained period of many years involving hundreds of strikes with clear military objectives. and is that a correct use of an intelligence service? i think that's a very fundamental question, and we've got the same issue with respect to yemen, i think, right now and potentially other places. so it is this, the cia just growing outside of any reasonable interpretation of its original mandate from the time of its birth. that's a huge issue. the cia has been astonishingly

successful in keeping that caged in and not discussed. so there's a lot to be talked about. i think, also, the leak process itself has led to a bit of a distortion of the reporting. i think this is an area where your public editor did a very, very good job of reviewing the situation. that is, you know, many publications in the u.s. are really focused on our national security apparatus and what it's doing, what it's thinking, how it evaluates things. so that's what gets this tremendous effort put into ferreting this information out and reporting it. what's actually going on on the grounds in pakistan are the claims that they make about efficacy of the strikes and the number of civilian dead correct claims, whether the broader consequences of this effort for u.s. relations with pakistan. i mean, for instance, if at the end of the day we wind up

killing several hundred terrorists and would-be terrorists with minor collateral damage, but we turn pakistan -- once defined as one of our closest non-nato allies -- into an irreconcilable enemy with nuclear weapons, that's not a success. >> david, i don't know where you come out on the drone thing, but let me just pose this. it seems to me as a person on, you know, litigating this issue that the government wants to have it both ways, they want to talk over and over again about the drone strikes but never tell us what they dope want us to know -- don't want us to know. and doesn't the leak system fail? you deny self-pain sociologically, but isn't that the failure that the cards are all held by the government? >> yeah. this goes to what i was trying to get at earlier about the necessary, constructive ambiguity that the government wants in this area. if what you said is right, that the government, um, the government wants to have it both

ways and the same people who are trying to deny these foia suits are the ones in some concerted way leaking, then we have a real basis for cynicism. however, since leaks are not this monolithic phenomenon, we don't really know who's saying what, there's a lot of quasi-authorized talking, um, it's hard to really pin down that charge on the white house since, um, it's hard to say what they might have disclosed through leaks versus anyone else. >> but why should we divide the government like that? isn't it one government? >> yeah. so i think, um, this is kind of the dark side of what marty was, in a sense, celebrating, i think, in the last panel which is that most principled justification for playing the game of, um, talking in an unattributed, you know, leaky way about the drone program while asserting the glomar defense to these foia suits is something about the diplomatic courtesy of nonacknowledgment.

that puts it in the best light. the most negative light is that kind of disclosure allows the government to get all the upside without allowing domestic watchdog groups like the aclu to leverage the disclosure for details that matter to a lot of people about procedures, legal standards, collateral damage and the like. i think somewhat complicating the question of, you know, the normative question of whether this is, um, good or bad or just or not is, um, the counterfactual. you know, in a world in which there wasn't this kind of quasi-authorized or authorized talking about drones, do we see, you know -- it's not necessarily a world of more frontal official acknowledgment in which we're having a more pristine, you know, rich, democratic conversation about drones with more integrity. it might be a world in which there's no disclosure or far less disclosure about drones at all.

i find very vexed and difficult these kind of high-level, normative questions about is this good or bad for democracy, the system we have, um, and i don't -- i have no sharp answers, you know? but i think, i think there are -- i would agree with the proposition there are real costs to the system. let me just say one other quick thing on whether it's good or bad. you also, um, you mentioned earlier the common, um, critique that who is scott shane and "the new york times" to publish these secrets, and, um, this is an affront on democracy, you know? we have elected leaders and yet "the new york times" or the individual leaker is talking about drones. um, i think what i was saying earlier provides a partial response which is that that rests on a very thin, implausible conception of democracy in the sense that, um, our elected leaders have effectively blessed, um, talking to scott shane about these things in their practices if not in the laws they technically, they put on paper.

no senior government official has ever been prosecuted for leaking. um, there's been hardly, there's been almost zero disciplinary action. will hasn't even been much energy or resources invested in finding leakers, much less going after them. in light of that longstanding background, it's not crazy to think that the government has in some practical sense, um, actually has kind of blessed the phi times to may -- "the new york times" to play a certain role. >> yeah. i mean, i guess the hard part is i agree with you at the sociological level, but there's no sociological defense for drake. you know, those guys can't come in -- >> lucky prosecution. >> right. they can't say, well, the big shots are doing it, and it's good for society, but, you know, that's not a defense. >> this is why you're legally vulnerable. but i will say the jury plays some role here at least in espionage prosecutions. in channeling -- i gave the case for why at least in technical terms it's very hard to see why every classified information

leak isn't prosecutable. one answer white-collar that the jury notwithstanding what the laws say or the instructions they get from judges has developed some sense of hypocrisy and sense of fairness and that the jury would be amenable to arguments in the spirit of, um, but you all all this leaking -- allow all this leaking to occur, how can you go after this me in it's sociological, but it gets filtered into the system as a real check here. >> of course then it concerns people on my side of the aisle because the district of new york decides to add advocate for jury nullification. scott, back to you. public editor right, it's really our fault that this stuff is not out there? your fault, not mine. [laughter] >> it's not his fault. >> i mean, actually, for those of you who did not see a column on sunday by our new public editor, kind of ombuds person,

margaret sullivan, she sort of gently chided "the new york times" for not doing enough coverage of drones, of targeted killing. quoted some folks, um, critically. you know, i guess the one thing that i would say to scott is that, um, he's absolutely right that most of our coverage has, you know, has certainly been weighted towards, you know, what are the people in washington saying about drone strikes, how do they make these decisions as opposed to the poor folks in villages in yemen and in pakistan who see them coming down on their neighbors or on themselves. but that is not really related to, that's our, um, that's the inherent difficulty of doing that reporting. it's nothing to do with the fact that it's classified. you know, the classification certainly doesn't keep us from going to pakistan and walking around the tribal areas and asking a lot of questions.

what because keep us -- what does keep us from doing that is that the tribal areas are a very hazardous place between the militants and the isi, the pakistani intelligence, very difficult to travel around. and if you do, you know, and i haven't done it, if you do talk the people who try to do it, some pakistani journalists try to do it, they often find that the people they're talking to, they are uncertain as to their reliability as eyewitnesses because they are sometimes intimidated by the militants, sometimes they're sympathetic to the militants, sometimes they're intimidated by the isi, sometimes they're being paid by the isi. so even if you do that reporting, it's very difficult. but i would certainly agree with the public editor and with scott that we could do more. ..

>> the new york times has offered more reporting out of pakistan, and about pakistani affairs than most of its competitors. but it's still huge issue that's being missed. >> scott, isn't bradley manning, isn't bradley manning and wikileaks different? don't you feel a little uncomfortable with what is indiscriminate wholesale providing document, as opposed to the guy who, he's a great

type situation. drake sees something he doesn't like. he can't get any remedy, and so he's accused of and i guess he actually does. he makes that public works of the public and do something about. that's not wrapping many. should we feel differently about bradley manning than a thomas drake's of the world's? >> there are differences, and you articulated them, it was interesting that earlier i think it was ken wainstein said, who made this distinction which seem to be on half of "the new york times," because there is a continuing grand jury investigation of wikileaks, and presumably julian assange and the other folks have worked for wikileaks, if they actually brought a successful prosecution for the first time, correct me if i'm wrong, that a nongovernment employee would be prosecuted successfully for disseminating classified information. so even though there is a

distinction between the tom drakes and the bradley manning, i'm very uncomfortable with the idea that there is a very clear-cut distinction for two reasons. one is, i feel somewhat awkward saying oh, yeah, that manning can he was completely irresponsible, and that assange, he deserves what he gets. when i spent months writing stories based on the documents that they in fact still and provided to "the new york times." so that would be somewhat two-faced of me come at a think of "the new york times" to take a position. the other thing is i don't really see, i see a difference in scale, maybe in motive and so when. but i don't really see how we are, you know, one could say that i spent a considerable amount of my time trying to find out classified information and make it public. and so if the julian assange is go off to the hoosegow for that

crime, you know, i'm going to be looking over my shoulder. and so, you know, i'm hoping that doesn't happen. >> bill keller once as to whether the new york times would sign onto an amicus brief on behalf of julian assange. he chose to do that what we're making a presentation at the board of directors for the new york times company. i sort of change the subject which are going to do the right now. david, do you buy into the premise of my question that bradley manning is a different, and not only in quantity but in quality? >> i definitely. i mean, i think a government, just look at it from the perspective of the government and executive branch, can tolerate some amount of whether misguided or noble, discrete revelation by individual employees of perceived abuses or problems on the order of thomas drake, it can tolerate as a matter of just kind of internal

governance someone who has a much more subversive aim of, you know, condemning the whole system. bradley manning wasn't at least by the time he was finished wasn't trying to expose a particular concern he had, or bring to light some particular perceived flaw. he was basically, he basically found the u.s. government i think to be an awful force in the world and was trying to excite a much more fundamental subversive aim. i think that puts a lot of pressure on the model i was describing about how leaks have been self regulated within government for years, because he's so far beyond the pale. action on two levels. one in the kind of indiscriminate goodness of what he leapt, and a lack of regard for kind of the internal norms that are supposed to constrain even though those who violate the technical laws. to come his and no sense of the term legal or everyday use

authorized to do any of this. he's had a very low level. he's a rogue actor, and kind of every respect. the case is so extreme that i kind of wonder if it misleads as a guide to the government deals with leaking generally. however, i do think it raises the big issue going forward about whether it's helped get us into a new and maybe more troubling legal paradigm. >> before we go to audience questions, just quickly, a prosecution of bradley manning -- excuse me, julian assange. thing or bad thing for the system? >> i decline -- i incline strong against the. i don't know if i have a well thought answer but i tend to side, i love people in the audience -- a well-known scholar in the field about indistinguishable the of wikileaks from the new york times. and attended think there's a lot

to that. maybe i'll just leave it at that. i think basically, as scott, scott called it a dysfunctional system where leaders are much more vulnerable than the press. i think that's probably strikes a decent balance them at least in the absence of the conspiracy which doesn't seem to be, to excellent trait information, doesn't seem to be proven in the assange case. i think "the new york times" has a very awkwardly situation, these are the, wikileaks. may be ominous for the new york times innocents. your natural allies. on the other hand, there's a concern to distance yourself from wikileaks to show the kind of ethic of responsibility that has in part, seems to justify the legal latitude that "the new york times" operator with for so many years. so i understand, i think it's a very tough case for you guys. anyways, i think it's all going

to come back because the way things are playing out. i might guess, and for my no inside info, but the u.s. government would not have prosecuted assange, given the backlash. >> scott horton, prosecution and how bad would be? >> i will talk about both of them. personal, bradley manning, i agree completely with your analysis of bradley manning. he is not a whistleblower by any stretch of the imagination. neither under the statute nor under the common use of that term. and moreover, as a member of the military is engaged in this, i think either has to be disciplinary action. there has be but it strikes me as unavoidable. the big mistake in the case is the demonization and the harsh treatment which i think were just, what did p.j. crowley say? knuckleheaded? i think that's what they were, just done. but julian assange is a different case.

i'm not sure exactly what the theory is that would be used here. it seems to me that the theory would wind up being something of a stretch under current law in any event, but it just strikes me generally that this will be a public relations disaster for the united states to do. not a smart thing. you're going to turn into a martyr, a martyr in the eyes of the people all around the world. that doesn't advantage the united states i think the u.s. has already made a number of mistakes in this case was overdue and overaggressive accusations against him, which he is used very much to his benefit. if you look at the decision that was given by the ecuadorian foreign minister, consisted of a long recitation of things that were said by public affairs spokesman of the department of defense, american diplomats, by american political officials in seoul. i was just like listening to all of this, stunned at a pixel

seems to me that would backfire. >> questions from the audience in the short time we have a. if anybody wants to ask anything. there's a question back here. >> on the subject of leaks, i think we will have to ask "new york times," how often do you get leaks that are just so it reaches our national security point of view that you choose step back from? i'm sure you get a lot of boring stuff, you just don't want to write about. does that happen very often? scott, what is your preferred way of getting leaked material? because your phone must be monitored in some way. so does it come in snail mail? i guess that's a subject of itself, but i believe the state department did an internal assessment of the damage from wikileaks, which, of course, they did not admit publicly but i believe it was leaked. >> advise him as council just

answer the first question. >> if i understood first question, it was how often do we get something, find something at that we can do not publish, because we think it will be too damaging. you know, it's not rare. i mean, it happens, you know, depending on precise your definition is, you know, maybe in my bureau it happens a couple dozen times a year that someone finds out something significant that they choose not to put in the newspaper. after talking all, the news you and the potential consequences. in terms of high like to get information, i'll to you what, it is getting, this is a very important point that hasn't come up today. it's getting very tough. one theory as to why there have been six leaked prosecutions is, and i think for them, to our

e-mail exchange between reporters and government officials that the defendants, but are becoming part of the evidence. the government has the right to look at government e-mail just like anyone simpler can look. and they see a story built like a newspaper and they can take the violent, the reporters in, plug it into the e-mail system and .003 seconds of elizabeth what is exchanged e-mails that reporter in the last, you know, two months and then they are off to the race. so all the discussion earlier about how difficult this crime is to prevent so on is becoming and less true. so just to be very clear, i like things in brown paper wrappers. [laughter] >> under a rock. >> 1627 heidi splete northwest, suite 700. >> other questions. questioned over here.

imac. >> -- [inaudible] >> i was wondering if you felt the same way about daniel ellsberg. it seems become mr. ellsberg said he thought it was pretty hard to see which between the two of them. >> yesterday has said that. in fact, i publicly disagreed with him about that once. no, i think a whistleblower is disclosing specific information that is found that relates to some wrongdoing or something that the public urgently needs to know. and what ravi many was doing was just global. it was all the confidential cable traffic that he was able to access. he was turning over. so that's really not the sort of filtering and not the sort of motivation that i associate with the whistleblower. i think by the way the one major

question concerning bradley manning is, who authorized him to have access to all those cables? and what i see the demonization of bradley manning, the constant attacks and i constantly think, somebody doesn't want us to ask and explore certain questions. and i think, you know, the fact that he was given access to those materials is something that is well worth been fully explored, because somebody made a major error in judgment. >> there's a question here. >> i think we're forgetting the flavor of the month from a while back, the valerie plame case. and i i would just like you to speak to the difference between that kind of elite which seem very pointed, to, in fact, do damage to personnel's integrity in terms of their safety and